U.S. Nuclear Strategy in Disarray

Published: February 25, 1990

WASHINGTON—
As the United States restructures its military forces and reduces military spending, it is imperative that it do so in a way that reduces the risk of nuclear war. But the first Bush defense budget moves us in the opposite direction - toward increased reliance on nuclear weapons and increased risk of a nuclear war that neither superpower wants.

Given the persistent budget deficit and the extraordinary changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the pressures to cut military spending are intense. The Administration will be sorely tempted to buy peace within the Pentagon by allowing each military service to design its own cut. Congress must not permit this to happen, and it must resist its own impulse to allow local interests to shape the budget. Most important, it must assure that we do not once again, as we did in the 1950's, try to rely on nuclear weapons to get more ''bang for the buck.''

The most dramatic shifts in the military budget should take place in our strategic forces. The Defense Department proposes to go forward with both the MX and Midgetman mobile missiles, a large Star Wars program, the Stealth bomber and a variety of other programs. The rationale for these programs was that the U.S. needed the capability to fight a nuclear war by targeting Soviet missiles. It was feared that without this capability we would not be able to credibly threaten a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union in response to a massive Soviet conventional or nuclear attack in Europe.

If that rationale ever made sense, it does not now when no one believes that the Kremlin has either the intention or the capability to launch an attack in Europe. By the end of this year, the changed position of the Warsaw Pact allies and the substantial withdrawal of Soviet forces from central Europe will provide all the assurance we need that there will be no such attack.

The Administration's rationales for these programs grow less persuasive by the day. We are told that the Soviets have not yet altered their strategic programs. That may be true, but the forces we need are those that will deter a Soviet attack; that is not dependent on the precise size and shape of Soviet forces.

We are told that we now need Star Wars to deal with small powers. But if a third country ever threatens the U.S. with nuclear devastation, it will be with a weapon smuggled in or flown in through our nonexistent air defense net; it will not be an intercontinental ballistic missile - the only kind of delivery vehicle our Star Wars system could shoot down.

We are told that we need the new bombers, the MX missile and other programs so that we can target Soviet mobile missiles. But it is not in our interest to target such missiles. We should want the Soviets to be as confident in their second-strike capability as we are in ours. Then neither side has any incentive to strike first in a crisis.

Indeed, American strategic forces should be designed so that they can survive a Soviet first strike and do not threaten the survivability of Soviet strategic forces. Such a posture would be in sharp contrast to our current force - which is on a hair trigger, ready to strike first or be a quick second. A redesigned force would greatly reduce the risk of accidental war.

To develop such a force, we should cancel the MX and redesign the Midgetman as a non-mobile missile to go into existing silos; we should cancel the B-2 bomber. We should plan to move toward a strategic force of much smaller size, consisting of mobile missiles at sea, fix-based single warhead missiles on land and a small bomber force. Such a strategic posture is in our interest no matter what the Soviets do, since it removes either side's incentive to strike first. But we should seek to enhance stability by locking in a similar Soviet posture in the Start II talks.

We need to pay equal attention to nuclear warheads in redesigning our European-based forces. It is impossible to believe that, just one year ago, the Bush Administration was treating the modernization of short-range nuclear-tipped missiles in Germany as the most important issue facing the Atlantic alliance.

As we greatly reduce our forces in Europe over the next several years, we should withdraw most and perhaps all of the nuclear weapons, and seek to negotiate a nuclear-free zone in the center of Europe. Denuclearizing Germany would not only reduce the risk of nuclear weapons being detonated in Europe in the heat of conflict, it would also deflate any possible claim by a newly united and assertive Germany that if nuclear weapons are needed in Germany, they should be German weapons.

Above all, we should not plan on the first use of nuclear weapons to deter or to respond to whatever threats of aggression we foresee in Europe. We should keep sufficient American forces in Europe to deter war without relying on nuclear threats, which will be increasingly hollow and would paralyze us in the event that we needed to resort to the use of force.

We should also recognize that we are unlikely to use nuclear weapons anywhere else in the world. Continued threats to do so hinder our non-proliferation efforts and will complicate relations with allies grown weary of such weapons. This means that we should publicly announce a policy of removing nuclear weapons from all of our surface ships. We should not equip any of our ready Army or Marine units with nuclear weapons. And we should remove all our nuclear weapons stored overseas outside of Europe.

These steps would also mean that we could avoid the tremendous cost of rebuilding our nuclear weapons production plants.

We will continue to live in a dangerous world in which using force cannot be ruled out. We will need effective and ready conventional forces and a nuclear deterrent that remains secure from attack or accidental use, even as it drastically shrinks. We can do all of this and still have a large peace dividend if we make sensible choices.